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on friday we blew this popsicle stand and headed for the hills. specifically, the black hills. this is roughly a 6-7 hour drive depending on your stops.

we went with friends joe and audrey. we didn’t have many plans….just relax and the boys wanted to fish at least one day. mission accomplished! j & a have made several mini vacations in the hills so they were in charge of the reservations. they told me the room was nothing fancy but that we’d be gone all the time anyway so it wouldn’t matter. as I passed this info on to friends and my sisters they were #1 surprised i had relinquished control and #2 told me the room would have no “facilities” and no air-conditioning. i didn’t want to appear like a pansy-butt so i just made sure i had my credit card in case an emergency holiday inn was called for.

our accommodations were quaint and quite possibly the smallest room i have ever stayed in. this is a shot of the outside.

we made use of the little table and chairs at the end of each day by sharing some fancy horse ovaries (chips, grapes, & crackers) and some bubblie (okay it was just MGD beer most nights)

this is the inside of our cabin.

yes, that’s the entire room. you can’t really see it but there is “facilities”. and they are TINY. i didn’t try it but i believe i could touch the shower and the toilet at the same time and the sink was located in between those. needless to say, there was not a lot of romancing going on in there!

so, we did these things in repetition for the entire 4 days we were there. sometimes we got crazy and mixed up the ORDER in which we did these things.

we drove through the custer state park. we saw deer and antelope (yeah i know, just like the song goes…home home on the range, where the deer and the antelope play– which in case you didn’t know already, i once sang that song on a stage in front of 600 people and accompanied myself on the guitar but that’s a tale for another day) (and i hope THAT song is in your head the way it was in mine for 4 days!).

and we fed the donkeys. well most of us did. i was the only one with the camera so i COULDN’T feed them okay?!?! fine, you all know about my fear of animals so i’m sure you’re not surprised that many times my photos were taken while i was in the vehicle with the windows rolled up. at least i didn’t lock the doors. the donkeys are not very particular about what they eat. they like old bread, fresh bread, doughnuts, crackers, marshmallows, carrots and probably anything else you might give them. the babies were really cute. some of the bigger ones are a bit pushy when there is food about. joe got boxed in a couple of time. (between you and me, i don’t think he liked having his backside exposed to them) you have to be a bit cautious as you are winding through the park as you can come around a curve and THERE THEY ARE right in the road waiting for you.

and we saw buffalo. they are huge. and supposedly mean although (surprise!) we didn’t exit the vehicle to test the theory. lots of baby buffalo too.

and i didn’t get any pictures of this (what!?!??!) but there were gobs of gaggles of gobblers (like my alliteration?) and bookoo babies. since i have no pix…here’s your visual…they were brown, football shaped with little stick legs. the babies were smaller. see! i didn’t need the camera.

and the boys fished.

us girls could have dropped them off and gone shopping but we had better ideas. like napping and reading harry potter.

oh hi tom.

we also fed bread and marshmallows to the squirrels and birds. i know, we really pushed the envelope of excitement.

the boys tried to trick the fish into eating marshmallows but they were too smart for that (the fish i mean) no big success stories regarding the fishing but they had fun. and managed to soak their shoes and sox once. no problem….we just closed the windows with their sox on the outside and let them “air dry” as we drove down the highway. i’m sure someone was wondering why granny wasn’t sitting on the roof in her rocking chair (again no pix…..think beverly hillbillies)

so we did those things everyday. in addition to that, we got up at the buttcrack of dark (4:30am) every morning so there was time to do a few other things each day. as a side note, i’d like to mention that i think the reason joe crapped out on us by 8pm was due to the early morning thing-just a theory i have.

the first morning we went to a balloon launch. that was great fun. i think there were about 8 balloons that launched and we got there early enough (ya think?!?) to see the entire set up and process. it was amazing.

and there was even a quilt show in town that weekend so audrey and i took that in. the boys had a car show to entertain them. there was a street dance we could have gone to but naturally, joe was already sawing logs!

and there were several (8 or so) buffalo statues throughout the town that different artists had worked their magic on. there was one that had an actual working train that went around it. this is just one that caught my fancy.

all in all, it was great fun. we laughed, we communed with nature, did a bit of the touristy thing (walked through keystone and i tried to get the boys to dress up for an olde time photo but they weren’t having none of it.)and managed to relax which was the whole point of it.

Loved reading about your trip. Brought back memories of camping as a kid. We’d camp from WA state to Iowa to visit relatives every 2-3 summers when I was young. I could be wrong but I thought it was Custer State Park that had some of the biggest and meanest mosquitos I’d ever bitten bitten by! LOL! (My dad always liked taking the circuitous route to Iowa. VBG. I’ve been to just about every national park btw Tacoma and Des Moines, IA and a lot of the state parks as well. BTW, I hate camping. VBG)

Hey, the room can’t be all that bad. There’s a quilt or did you bring that. Thanks for sharing!

Did anyone else notice Tom went on vacation with her?? I was so enchanted with the quilted buffalo that I missed that the first time through… yes K, your posts are always worthy of a second cruise through 😉

we did have a fab time and all the buffalo pieces were so interesting. each one had an artist’s statement posted nearby so you could read about the inspiration for the piece and some of the artist’s history. i wish i’d had my camera with me all the time and had pix of the others.

karen & randi-glad you enjoyed the review. i worried it might be a bit like suffering through endless vacation photos….

christine…i didn’t bring the quilt along. each of the beds had a different quilt on it. i used to have a “movie quilt” that i snuggled under at the theaters because they keep it so cool until scott started refusing to go to movies with me if i was bringing it along. he’s so fussy sometimes!

jan….yes, tom tagged along! he loved the scenery. 🙂

and krisr…..you KNOW i’m too sceert to sleep out in the open under the stars….a critter could eat me!

Copyright

The writing and designs presented by me on this site retain the full and complete copyright of Kay M. Peterson. Instead of stealing them, just contact me. I'm pretty easy to work with and that way I won't have to put a hex on you. it's so much work to hex people. all the pot washing and have you any idea how hard it is to get fresh eye of newt?